The Open University has confirmed that it has settled the employment tribunal with former law lecturer Almut Gadow mere days before the first hearing was scheduled to take place. The move signifies a U-turn for the University, which had previously vowed to “vigorously defend” itself in court.
Dr Gadow was initially dismissed from her position as a lecturer in November 2022, after raising concerns about changes to the curriculum for the criminal law module, which she claimed would “indoctrinate students in gender identity theory”.
Specifically, Gadow explained that the changes would make diverse gender identities a mandatory part of the curriculum and require that students be taught to use offenders’ preferred pronouns.
This, Gadow claimed, was antithetical to the criminal lawyer’s task of presenting facts, as “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”. Moreover, she expressed concerns that if an “offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case”, this could potentially “mask relevant facts”.
At the time of her dismissal, the Open University alleged that Gadow was guilty of “gross misconduct”. In particular, her posts about gender identity on an online forum for criminal law tutors were described as “serious insubordination”, and her persistence in commenting on the topic amounted to “serious bullying and harassment”.
In a previous interview with CAF, Gadow detailed how her questions to management about the updated curriculum was met with silence and general unwillingness to explain the changes. After the end of the academic year, Gadow was informed of “a disciplinary investigation” being initiated against her as she had apparently “violated the transgender staff policy”.
According to Gadow, this policy is primarily concerned with how to respond to colleagues coming out as trans, but it also includes some language about “creating an environment that is inclusive, trans-friendly and respectful”.
Her managers claimed that Gadow’s questions and comments regarding the changes to the curriculum and on the broader topic of gender ideology had failed to live up to this requirement. Consequently, she was dismissed after nearly ten years of teaching law at the University.
Following her departure, Gadow took to the OU to an employment tribunal, alleging that she “was harassed, discriminated against, and unfairly dismissed because I reject gender ideology and believe in academic freedom”.
Leading up to the tribunal, Gadow raised more than £100,000 for her case and enlisted the help of the Free Speech Union. Now, just days before the first hearing, the University has apparently settled the case with Gadow and paid her an undisclosed amount in compensation.
In a statement to the Telegraph, a spokesperson from the OU said: “We can confirm that a settlement has been reached with Dr Gadow”. However, the statement did not mention whether the University had officially accepted any liability as part of the settlement.
For her part, Gadow took to X and celebrated the settlement. “After months of publicly vowing to fight this case all the way, ‘vigorously’ and ‘robustly’, months of claiming it could not wait for the truth to out in court, the OU has now paid good money to avoid truth outing in court” she posted on the social media platform.
The move does indeed represent a U-turn by the University, which has not refrained from criticising Gadow publicly in the leadup to the tribunal. In 2023, a spokesperson for the OU told Times Higher Education that Gadow “has made a series of offensive and spurious allegations online which we reject in the strongest terms.” The spokesperson went on to say that the University “welcome[s] the opportunity the tribunal hearing provides to present our evidence about the facts of this case”.
“Why, the OU faithful will be asking,” Gadow posted on X, “has the University decided to pay me an undisclosable amount of money to avoid a public airing of the facts, if what I said was not true”.
Although large institutions and wealthy individuals occasionally settle winnable cases just to avoid the publicity, the OU’s decision to settle is curious given its public statements about wanting to “present our evidence”. Perhaps its decision was influenced by the outcome of a similar case brought by Jo Phoenix. Like Gadow, Phoenix had left the University after being harassed by colleagues and managers over her gender critical views. In January of last year, an employment tribunal found that the University had failed to protect her from victimisation, harassment, and direct discrimination. The case received a great deal of publicity and the public embarrassment of losing at the tribunal resulted in an independent investigation into the academic environment at the Open University.
It is possible that a public hearing of the evidence in the Gadow case would have produced similarly humiliating results for the OU. Dr Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel at the FSU, told the Telegraph that although the key issues of academic freedom “were not tried in the employment tribunal, we take this outcome as a welcome sign that the Open University and other English universities realise that our law will not tolerate attempts to silence academics”.
We can certainly hope that Harris is right and that the settlement is an indication that the OU realised that the law is not on their side. However, it should not take an expensive and time-consuming employment tribunal to force this realisation from any university. If Gadow had not been able to raise such large funds for her case, she would likely have had to settle for a much smaller compensation or even drop her claim entirely, though the law was on her side. This is why we need better enforcement mechanisms for our current protections.
Academic freedom and free speech on campus is protected by law, but this fact means little if the only way to seek redress is through costly legal action. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 was meant to fix that. The sooner it is allowed to commence, preferably with all of its original provisions, the better.